@mekkaokereke I absolutely feel you in what you're saying. And I believe in learning from anything I can.
I will also say that my instance has 10 users, of which like 3 are regularly active. I never know what the Fediverse drama of the month is because it goes sailing past my tiny instance. I see my friends and follows and they see me. That's enough.
@mekkaokereke
Exactly my thoughts too.
At some point, a thing will get such value, that it would be unethical to your own family not to sell it. If I would genuinely give you $1bn for any object, wedding ring, whatever, you’d upset your family if you didn’t take it*
BlueSky is effectively guaranteed to fail to be ‘the thing’. It either just fails or it succeeds to the point it’s bought and made to fail for profit.
Fediverse is many things and physically not one thing. It is the www as is, not those other failed webs the kids don’t even know existed.
This all said, go where your people are and let that drive it. Rewards the good work. No judgement from me here and I’d recommend a presence on both.
I think Mastodon will become the European hub and then many Americans will ‘discover’ it around 2030.
*Obviously there are exceptions, money isn’t everything, but there is nothing like this about BlueSky. The idea holds.
@mekkaokereke I still feel the core bit — incentive to decentralize — is fragile. You really have to understand the dangers of sticking to the most convenient instance. I may not post on x, bluesky, but picking an instance that might not be here next year is a hard sell (even if moving around was architecturally thought of). Yet another thing to feel bad about (for being more lazy than principled).
@mekkaokereke I absolutely feel you in what you're saying. And I believe in learning from anything I can.
I will also say that my instance has 10 users, of which like 3 are regularly active. I never know what the Fediverse drama of the month is because it goes sailing past my tiny instance. I see my friends and follows and they see me. That's enough.
@roadriverrail @mekkaokereke Not everyone can do this (admin an instance) but virtually everyone knows or can meet someone who can.
Big instances are about Mastodon's latent #twitter insecurity, craving growth.
I disagree completely.
Maintaining a small instance on Mastodon that is safe for Black users requires more skills than it is reasonable for one individual to have.
There are very few individuals on earth that have the technical skills to admin an instance, the moderation skills to moderate it, the deep knowledge of the scary parts of the internet to be familiar with the CSAM and nazi instances and keep up with new ones as they pop up, the cultural awareness to understand the types of issues that affect Black people online, the expendable income to afford the costs of running a server or the fundraising skills to coordinate a socially funded instance, the community managing skills to support something interesting.
That's too many skills.
Either we flock to big instances that support more of these things.
Or
we go to smaller instances that don't have all of these skills.
Or
we provide horizontal infrastructure that offloads some of these skills and costs.
@CartyBoston @mekkaokereke I think it's also a factor of the ol' 80/20 power distribution that happens through typical forms of habit and inertia, plus the design choices of apps and tools. For example, I recently had to set up my own copy of Postiz because it's set up to treat Mastodon as a monolithic service, so it can only work with a single instance. Of course the Postiz hosted solution is configured for mastodon.social...
@mekkaokereke no one is safe until we're all safe. ❤️
... And i for one believe you are exactly correct.
@mekkaokereke 100% agree! There's always something to learn and room for improvement.
@mekkaokereke I’m so happy you’re here. The amount I’ve learned from you is priceless.
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io do you think projects like Bonfire are a step in the right direction?
@mekkaokereke also, was going to ask in my last toot but i ran out of chars: as some1 who doesn't know literally anything abt bluesky, r u happy to share some of the things youve learned from the platform?
Here are two good things that have been learned /borrowed from. No, they didn't originate any of these ideas.
1. Composable Moderation is good:
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/115820558835849667
2. Giving people the ability to detach their post from Quote Posts, is good. If you Quote Post me to add context, I can keep it! If you Quote Post me to drag me, and I kinda deserve it, I can also keep it! But if you Quote Post me and I'm not enjoying the experience, I can detach your Quote Post from my post, and live in peace.
@mekkaokereke
glad you are here and posting this. I totally agree that the tech has evolved enough now that the future will belong to decentralized spaces like the fediverse.
as an average middle aged cis white dude, I am part of the current problem but i want to be part of the solution in every way that I can.
The faster we can make black people and others feel more welcome here, the better for all of us.
The faster mastodon, and the fedi, becomes a reflection of the infinite diversity of humanity, and welcomes that, the better.
again.
thank you.
@chris @mekkaokereke Seconding all of this!
Grateful for all the Black voices who continue to push for a more diverse fediverse, big part of the I'm still hopeful about its future myself.
@mekkaokereke
That said, if someone wants to offer me $44B for my one-user instance I’d strongly consider it. 😉
@mekkaokereke you are right. BlackSky alone changed the user demographics and created a marginaly more culturally protected environment than Black Twitter. I wish I could see the like in Fediverse but hsve not found it.
@mekkaokereke actually decentralized social tech: email, rss, irc, bbs, activityPub, ... all functionally unkillable while there's a working internet
@mekkaokereke i'm glad you post on fedi, neighbor, itd be worse without you
